Vagabond Shoes
by SapSorrow
Summary: Sequel to "A World I never made", modern AU, Thor and Loki are now living in New York where Loki has just landed his first major role on Broadway. Contains graphic sexual content. Thorki. How will Loki cope with fame? Why is he being stalked by the number 19? What will Heimdall do without his lounge singer? Will Thor ever get a real job? All will be revealed!
1. Chapter 1

**Vagabond Shoes**

"**These vagabond shoes/ they're longing to stray/ right through the very heart of it/ New York, New York"**

**1.**

"Thor, it's raining!" Loki wails, stomping into the flat and shaking water out of his hair like a wet dog – "Make it stop!"

"What do you think I am, a weather god?" Thor yells back, without moving from the sofa, though he turns the TV off and sits up straighter, turning round to look at Loki who comes in dripping rain and looking so put out that Thor cannot help but laugh at that petulant expression.

"It's not funny," Loki sulks at him, pouting – "I'm wet through. What if I get ill? Oh god what if I lose my voice?"

"Loki calm down," Thor sighs, still smiling – "It's only a little rain, you won't lose your voice; and hello to you too."

"Hi," Loki pouts, not that easily placated, though his pout turns into a smirk and he comes around to lean over Thor and kiss him before leaning in and insinuating himself into Thor's lap, wriggling against him comfortably – "Mmm –" he purrs, a pleasant, warm tingling starting in the back of his neck, the first place Thor always starts stroking him – "Thor warm. Warm also dry –" He tries to nuzzle at Thor's face but Thor wrestles him away –

"Well _you _are wet and nasty –get off me!" he protests.

"But Th-or!" Loki whines, teasingly – "It's _only _a little rain!" He chuckles and Thor smiles despite the wet –

"Oh _now _it's funny –" he growls wearily.

"Yeh," grins Loki, smiling his most adorable smile that Thor can never ignore.

"At least take your coat off – you smell like a wet dog."

"Oh _brother –" _Loki drawls – "Anything for you". He shrugs the coat off, shaking it carelessly onto the floor with a dull wet leather squelch. He does not stop at that but peels off every other wet piece of clothing into a seeping dark pile on the floor before getting back onto Thor, wriggling naked into his lap. This time Thor is more than happy to warm every inch of Loki's cold skin with his warmer hands and steadily burning kisses.

_x_

Nearly two months now, that they have been in New York, three since they left _The Lokasenna _and Thor cannot believe how much they have come on in so short a space of time.

They head up the highway in a direction they agreed felt like vaguely North, with no road map or any real clue of what direction New York was in other than what they can gather from asking in every station and motel they pulled up in. There was no great sense of urgency, other than Thor's to get Loki out of his clothes each evening and drive back inside the body he was coming to need like he needed air. It became the pattern of their days and, as they consistently got lost, weeks to ride throughout the day with frequent stops for food, haul up at some motel for the night each time barely making it through the door before falling into one another in a desperate tangle of limbs – then out again for food and returning for the night in a similar state as first arriving.

It is strange to both of them to even _have _a routine, albeit one compatible with being constantly on the move, but somehow it feels right. They rarely discuss anything like sensible plans for what they will actually do when they reach New York, though Thor comes steadily to suspect that Loki is serious in his insistence that he tends to "Pursue the stage". Indeed he seems confident to the point of not caring less that he will land a major Broadway role within days of his arrival in the city.

"I'll take it by storm," he says – "And baby, you're my storm."

Thor sighs and kisses him without reply, not even faintly wanting to crush his new found optimism by pointing out that one does not simply fall into a starring role on Broadway. Though he cannot help but be slightly nervous about the future date at which Loki discovers it for himself. Right now it is not even faintly worth the argument.

A week into their travels, it occurs to Loki that his old backpack is distinctly heavier and feels more full than he remembers it ever being and later that night on a motel floor he investigates to find it stuffed with fifty dollar bills. He is on the verge of panicking when Thor hands him the note left neatly on top from one who has foreseen a great deal more than the fact that Loki would need instant reassurance that he was not about to get framed for something.

""It occurs to me,"" Loki reads aloud – ""That I have been remiss in paying for your services this past near year; allow me to rectify that. I believe you will find it sufficient. H.""

Loki frowns and moves his lips for a while in silent protest, still unsure whether or not he ought to panic –

"But –" he objects eventually, feebly – "There was never any agreement that he would – I don't – how much is it?" he sighs.

"I would not argue with Heimdall." says Thor, who remembers the one time he tried – "I think it's around seven thousand –"

"Fuck" Loki expectorates and when that does not seem adequate, reiterates – "Fuck me."

Though it is not a request Thor does. It successfully retrieves Loki from his state of shock and afterwards he lies across the bed, taking all of it up with Thor on the floor, still thinking about it.

"Shit me, we're _rich_," he says eventually. Thor laughs at him gently, though he has not seen that amount of money in one place any more than Loki has – he has at least contemplated the possibility and the need of it before now. Furthermore, he cannot help but silently praise Heimdall for the fact that he no longer has to confess to Loki that his own supplies, saved from his last job months ago, were beginning to run out.

Later, when Thor is asleep Loki has a proper recount of his earnings from the club and is nervously unsurprised after a few quick calculations, to find that they come to seven thousand two hundred and thirty nine dollars precisely. _But of course _he thinks, feeling himself drawn by that tricksy wind that has been plaguing him to do the math – nineteen by nineteen by nineteen. He lies awake a little that night wondering what it means, if a number could be stalking him, if he is just finally going crazier than he already suspected he might be. Thor rolls over in his sleep, pulling Loki against him instinctively, needily, and Loki does not lie awake for long.

_x_

The money proves to be just enough, when they arrive in New York, to live off delightfully, pay the deposit on a flat and the first few months rent. Thor stresses gently about the concept of getting a proper responsible job, while Loki knocks on every back stage door of every theatre he can find like an urchin in a fairy tale. While he does not fall into his starring role within the week as he expects to Thor is more than a little surprised when he does in fact make it into chorus lines and ensembles by the end of the month. Towards the end of the second month he comes home jubilant after landing a proper role in a new adaptation of "Cats" and Thor can no longer contain his surprise at what seems like a ridiculously implausible level of success.

This leads to their first domestic row as Loki switches from jubilant to furious within seconds screaming that Thor has no faith in him, that he does not think he is talented and of course thereby reaches the obvious conclusion that Thor does not love him and it has all been a lie. Thor replies that Loki has twisted his every word, that he always does this, that he does not want him working in theatre anyway if he is going to start behaving like a preposterous diva every time he hears a word he does not like. Loki sulks that he has been doing this for years and if Thor didn't like it he should have walked out like he first tried to do. Thor roars that to bring that up is monstrously unfair. Loki starts to cry messily and hitch out in gulps that he had been _so happy _about this, why could Thor just not be happy for him. Thor instantly regrets every harsh word he has said, choking up himself to see his little brother cry and drops to his knees to hold and sooth Loki as he crumples up, sobbing, on the floor. He stokes the back of Loki's neck, raining kisses over his head, telling him again and again how much he loves him, all that he means to him, and Loki claws greedily for more, needing to hear it and needing to hear it over and over before he will pull himself back into the place of believing it.

When his words run out Thor picks Loki up in his arms like a child and carries him to bed where he pushes his love with frenzied fingers, with lips and hands and cock, into every inch of Loki's skin. Loki scratches back, twisting and writhing beneath Thor as though he wants to fight it out and Thor does not stop his persistent ministrations until Loki is sleepy, placid and smiling once more.

That night as Thor watches Loki sleep he reminds himself to be more careful. Not to forget how damaged Loki has been and not to fool himself that, just because he is happy now, happier perhaps than he has ever been, there is not still a black core of oily doubt and self – hatred bubbling at Loki's centre. He knows it will out, that Loki's happiness, his sadness and his rage have been kept behind a mask so long that now as they all come out they do so fiercely and on a roller coaster of emotional incontinence through which he swears to himself and to Loki's sleeping form he will be there to carry him through until Loki is mended completely. He holds him tight that night, safe in the knowledge that this state of completion can one day be reached.

The next day Thor takes Loki out to dinner – the money is Loki's but the gesture is Thor's and neither of them question it – to celebrate Loki's success for which, Thor insists truthfully, he is genuinely impressed and pleased. Loki does not apologise for his going off the rails, Thor does not expect him to, but he in return promises that he will not let it ruin him; he will not become a diva or any more of a pretentious theatre asshole than he already was at heart. They both suspect this may be difficult, for Loki is the least known in a dazzling theatrical cast, headed by the acclaimed Broadway star Tony Stark. _Everyone _has heard of Tony Stark, though Loki insists, from the one brief introduction he has had to the man, that he is an insufferable, pretentious and utterly over inflated arrogant prick who he does not look forward to working with in the slightest.

It occurs to Thor, when he considers it, that Loki has actually been working extremely hard at following this whimsical new found dream and that he deserves every bit of his happiness right now. He says as much, and adds that he feels like a jerk in not having looked for a job yet.

"I just don't have a clue what I would do," he admits.

"I confess I can only see you as the manual labourer type," Loki agrees, half smirking.

"I have other skills," Thor huffs.

"Yes but I refuse to date a porn star". Thor pushes him gently from across the table, Loki grabs the hand that pushes and kisses it, sucking very gently at the ends of Thor's fingers.

"_Other _skills," Thor insists.

"Like what?"

"Well –" Thor thinks about it – "Haven't you seen my pancakes? You love my pancakes."

"It's true you do make the best breakfasts known to man or god," Loki agrees – "That's it then, become a chef!"

Thor laughs it off, though he cannot say it does not sound appealing –

"Look at me – would _you _hire me as a chef?"

"No, _I'd _hire you as my porn star, but that's different, you're my brother."

Loki says this a little too loudly, as he does everything, and a little old lady at the table next to them turns around, squawking quietly with a scandalised expression that makes them both giggle madly into their plates.

They walk home hand in hand tonight through this new shining world of rain slicked streets and blaring taxi cabs. Lights in all colours spill like upturned paint across the streets, playing like illusions to colour everything that falls beneath them. They watch the lights dance in one another's hair and across their faces, neither of them admitting to the other of how intently they are studying these changing colours.

On the corner of Secondand Forty-sixthstreet Loki suddenly stops dead staring ahead. Thor frowns at him; they have walked this way home dozens of times in the last two months. Thor has never before observed anything here that would cause Loki to pull up like a startled deer.

"What is –" he begins, his eyes following Loki's pointing finger, and his words running dead when he sees what he is pointing at.

It's a club, spilling neon green light from a sign that looks ancient, two letters gone dark in the name and two more flickering and buzzing like flies. A club spraying golden light across the pavement like a beckoning finger.

It's _The Lokasenna. _

_x_

**Dun dun duuuun! Did you really think I could do a sequel with Heimdall? I love this club too much to leave it behind! **

**I am really sorry if my description is lacking somewhat here – I've never been to New York so I'm going off literary interpretation and trying to keep it vague. Although I have just acquired a lovely small team of volunteers who are answering all my weird random questions about it!**

**Meanwhile please let me know what you think about the directions this is taking! **


	2. Chapter 2

**2.**

For several moments they stand on the street corner, looking from the club to one another with almost matching expressions of incredulity. For what feels like far too many minutes spent standing beneath a traffic light, they take it in turns, it seems, to begin to speak, get as far as "What the –" and "Did you –" before trailing off in dumbfound silence. Eventually of course, it is Loki that breaks it.

"Come on," he says, "I have an idea." Thor has to hold him back from just darting across the road in the excitement of being newly energised into action, pinching his skin a little instead of just his shirt in his need for Loki to not kill himself. Loki yelps a little and they undergo the almost ritual mini – argument of _did you have to hurt me? _– _Can't you ever look where you going? Did you _have _to hurt me? Loki, please just take care of yourself. _

That done, they move straight on from the argument, Loki leading Thor into a late night café two doors down from the club, which they eye suspiciously as they pass as though imagining it will do something even more untoward than be there in the first place. As Loki orders their drinks he inquires very casually – Thor realises now why Loki is taking charge of this, _he _could never make it sound so much like a question of casual interest – how long the club two doors down has been there.

"_The Skolpada?" _The waiter clarifies – "I dunno – since I can remember I guess."

Loki suggests he is thinking of the wrong club and throws out the name _Lokasenna. _The waiter has never heard of a _Lokasenna, _and insists the club two doors down is the only one on the street. They repeat this process in every café and bar still open at that hour across the street and get the same response over and over, an almost eerily familiar litany of _I dunno _ and _since I can remember. _One or two mentions of a unique rainbow coloured cocktail called a _Bifrost. _No firm answers and nobody who does not think of the club as _The Skolpada. _

Eventually they come to rest, staring up at the club, hands in pockets, frowning at the name sign.

"Are you reading what I'm reading?" Thor says finally.

"Are you reading _Lokasenna?" _

"Yeah,"

"Then you're reading what I'm reading." Loki thinks for a moment – "All the letters used to work though didn't they?"

"Loki –" Thor says patiently, though not wholly as though he believes his own words – "It's not the same club. It can't be."

Loki very casually asks the question that has been gently bothering him on and off for a while now and as always asks it as though it is not really bothering him at all –

"Am I going mad?"

"Well if you are, I am."

Loki looks at Thor and grins suddenly –

"Must be genetic. Come on." He takes Thor's hand firmly – really quite firmly in his – and they head inside the club.

As soon as they walk in, all ideas Thor had been attempting to have about it not being the same club vanish. It does not look _similar _to the place they left behind in the mid-west, it simply _is _the same place. The positioning of the bar, the stage, the faded gold curtains by the swinging front doors, all of it exactly as they left it. There is even the bowl like, spider – cracked dent in the wall by the door that Loki remembers his fist making one angry half drunken evening.

Perhaps not quite exactly, Loki notices it first – everything is just slightly shabbier than before, the gold curtains faded and in places truly threadbare, a dingy look about the stage as though it has not been used in a very long time, and signs of wear and tear all over that are indicative of more of a decline than could possibly have taken place in just two months.

There is one other difference, a new column in addition to the usual eighteen, a column of clear class, hollow and seeming to pulse with a radiant soft pink light. Thor sees the light reflect in Loki's eyes as he stares at it in curiosity, cocking his head to one side and taking a step in that direction to investigate further when they arrested by a low voice from behind the bar –

"Wondered when you two would be back".

They turn, Thor first, then Loki to where Heimdall is looking over at them with an expression that is very nearly a smile. It takes a couple of moments for Loki's attention to thoroughly fix, he seems curiously vacant all of a sudden, but when he does he frowns and, as they walk over to the bar replies –

"Really? _You _wondered when we would be back?"

"Curious isn't it," Heimdall replies drily and just sarcastically to let them know that something has been troubling him more than he would ever let on. Thor and Loki look at each other as they slide into bar stools in front of which a triple Jack Daniels and a shot of absinthe are waiting as though they have sat there these past two months.

"You really just couldn't get by without us could you?" Loki grins. Heimdall looks at him stonily –

"You have no idea."

"I don't want to ask –" Thor finds himself voicing his thoughts aloud.

"_I _do" Loki interrupts – "Heimdall, man what's the deal?"

"When you know, you'll know," Heimdall replies cryptically.

"Great. Ace Heimdall, and I just _knew _you were gonna say that. Great day, when I'm fucking psychic and you're not. Cheers," He adds, swallowing the absinthe.

"There's a stage there with your name on it Lie–Smith," Heimdall grunts, Loki wonders if he will ever get a chance to check that this is more than just a figure of speech, realising he wouldn't be surprised if his name _wasn't_ painted all over the underside of the stage in all his favourite colours.

"Yes, there's one on Broadway too," Loki replies, and Thor can tell from his dismissiveness that he is a lot more spooked by all of this than he is letting on.

"Loki," he chides gently – "Be nice".

"What?" Loki shrugs innocently and expansively – "This mother-fucker's creeping me the fuck out! _You _be nice."

"Well then I will," says Thor stubbornly – "Heimdall –" a glint creeps into his face that Heimdall's sharp eye can see is almost Loki – like – "Did you ever consider serving bar food?"

Loki drops his forehead onto the bar, stretching his arms across it with a melodramatic groan –

"Oh for _fuck's _sake!" he moans.

"What?" Thor protests – "We were just saying how I need a job."

"Yes. We were weren't we?" Loki sighs – "We were _just _saying, _just _before this spooky ass place decided to show the fuck up. Thor, baby, seriously?"

Thor shrugs, looking back at Heimdall.

"How are you at pancakes?" says Heimdall, deadpan. Loki groans again –

"They're fucking amazing," he groans, like this is the worst truth in his life – "As I bet you damn well know."

"I don't. Look," Heimdall sighs, this is difficult for him Thor can tell – "I'll be honest with you. Nothing's been right here – with this place, wherever it happens to be – since you two left. I won't say I'm not going to jump at the chance to have at least one of you working back here again because it seems – right now – like I don't know how _anything's _going to work out. But I do know that I have a kitchen and _you _need a job. When can you start?"

_x_

"I can't believe you," Loki grumbles as they head back home.

"What's to not believe? I have a job, isn't that a good thing?"

Loki vents a frustrated yell.

"Swear to God Thor you are the biggest dumbest –" he breaks off with a sigh – "It's _weird. _He's – I dunno – _shifty._"

"Oh, because you have never done anything that could be remotely described as _shifty."_

"So intensely not the point."

"It doesn't feel wrong Loki," Thor explains – "If the last few months have taught me anything, and they have, they've certainly taught me to go with something that feels right. And this does."

"I _know," _Loki sighs, as they head up the steps to the flat – "I _know _Thor, that's what worries me."

"Stop worrying," Thor chides, as they close the door behind them, turning Loki gently to face him and forgetting what he was saying in the dazzle of those bright eyes that glare up at him with more softness and less glare than Loki would ever like to imagine he demonstrated. He touches Loki's face so gently that it still makes Loki flinch, but it doesn't stop him dipping his head to kiss the crooked lips into silence.

"_This _feels right," he smiles.

"Well then your own logic dictates you go with it."

"Shut up Loki".

They twist and curl together like a pattern being woven into place, even after everything they have done over the past few months Thor has never got used to the extreme pleasure of simply kissing his little brother, he still draws it out as long as he can manage before needing more too desperately not to give in. Loki too has not yet got used to the amount of love and intensity Thor can put into a simple kiss. He had not even known it was possible. He ends up, as so often, when they stumble through the door in this manner, with his legs wrapped around Thor's waist and Thor carrying him through into the bedroom.

It is more than brilliant to them both, having a bedroom they can actually move around in. after what seemed like endless bickering the bedroom has ended up being a predominately red room that just misses elegant due to neither of the being able to keep clothes neatly, though Loki's side is infinitely more organised than Thor's. In return for this the entire rest of the flat is decorated in a rainbow of greens and Thor, true to his word does not complain.

Loki unhooks his legs from around Thor's back as Thor puts him down on the bed, neither of them quite sure at what point most of their clothes have come off, losing track of so much restless grasping, tearing and clutching of hands.

"Do you think –" Loki gasps, between kisses and as they impatiently wriggle out of their pants – "Do you think you could ever – spare my shirts?"

"Loki –" Thor groans, mounting him like a lion and sliding his raging erection furiously against Loki's – "You have not spared one grain of my heart. You undo me completely my Loki – be grateful it is just your shirts."

Loki glares back at him as well as he can, always afraid when he is baited into saying something sentimental –

"It is not," he murmurs quietly.

Thor bends over to kiss away Loki's awkwardness as he takes the lube from by the bed, slicking up his cock with hands that are rapidly becoming practised at this, teasing Loki with oiled fingers sliding into him until Loki is arching and writhing his whole body, begging silently to be taken. But Thor waits until he can get a little more than that and – far quicker than he would like – Loki is begging out loud, groaning out _please _over and over through gritted teeth. Thor kisses the pleas from his lips as though he does not love hearing each and every one, but as he slides deeply into Loki's body he cannot even _try _and make it look like he does not want it so completely it feels close to killing him. It almost frightens him how obsessed he has become, Loki's body, Loki's touch, his thoughts, his mannerisms, everything to the point where nothing else seems particularly important. He wonders if it is alright to be so captivated, so close to enchanted – but it does not matter – he is.

Loki's cries of delight never cease to be music in Thor's ears and he pounds into his perfect little brother with the intensity of one possessed. Loki makes no effort to moderate his volume and it never ceases to thrill Thor that he does not. He wants to make Loki make those sounds, is so attentive to his needs, even as he takes his pleasure, that Loki becomes easily overwhelmed. Thor's touch, his kiss, his hand at first gentle and then unforgiving around his cock, all of that and having him fill him so completely – he comes screaming, nails digging into Thor's shoulders, fingers so curled and tense it is painful to uncurl them and Thor is right behind him, barely feeling the nails that leave marks in his skin for days.

He breathes Loki's name as they fall apart, needing the cool air against skin that drips and burns but still needing to be holding hands, touching feet, _something, _curling up together again as soon as they can both breathe. They curl up together like two animals in a nest, gently basking until Loki turns around, dragging Thor's arm around him into a position he can sleep in.

"Loki –" Thor murmurs – "Can I ever get enough of you?" It is a rhetorical question but Loki answers all the same;

"God, I hope not". He wriggles against him happily.

"I love you". He can almost feel Loki roll his eyes as though this is the most tedious thing he has ever heard, at the same time as he wriggles into an even more boneless ball of contentment.

"_God _Thor," Loki grumbles, not even faintly minding – "I _know." _

"Loki?"

"I'm _sleeping!"_

"Marry me?"

Loki chuckles. It occurs to Thor, only as the words come out of his mouth, that he is actually serious. He wonders how and if to tell Loki this.

"You're funny."

"It's legal." A quite blatant lack of reply while it occurs to Thor that it's not _really _that legal considering -

"Nobody knows we're related –"A sleepy, muffled reply –

"We're _brothers, _idiot, that's more than a little related."

"You're right –" Thor begins, it was dumb, too fairy tale to be even really important, not even disappointing really. Loki interrupts him quickly, glad that it is dark and he had his back to Thor –

"I didn't say no, did I?"

_x_

**Heeee….so how do we feel about these two getting engaged maybe? :-) ….I was a tad surprised myself. **

**I should probably explain – I am using elements of Stephen King's Dark Tower series in here, though it won't matter a bit if you're unfamiliar with it cause I will explain everything in future chapters – but all the weirder parts of this story are inspired by that….just putting credit where it's due! :-)**


	3. Chapter 3

**This section is half pure fluff, half pure porn with only a faint nod towards plot, I apologise. :-)**

**3.**

"Thor, it's beautiful!" Loki stares big eyed through the shop window-"-buy me it, buy me it!"

Thor sighs, and objects that Loki has bought more clothes than anyone could need, since they got here anyway - and that besides which, all their money was Loki's anyway - he could just buy it himself.

"But I want _you _to get me it!" Loki wails – "I'll give you the money!"

"Loki that's ridiculous" Thor sighs, and though Loki pouts and grumbles he remains firm, at least until later that night when Loki goes into their bedroom to find the coat laid out on the bed. His petulant sulk of the last few hours instantly transforms into shimmering joy and he twirls around the living room in the faux fur and leather beaming, while Thor smiles at him like an indulgent parent wondering if he should stop giving into Loki's every whim but, at the end of the day, taking too much pleasure in seeing him happy not to.

"How do I look?" Loki preens.

"Gay," Thor retorts gruffly, determined not to simply tell Loki he is beautiful as he wants to and as he knows that Loki wants him to without at least making him work for it a tiny bit.

"_Th-or,_" Loki whines in the sing song way Thor wishes he were not coming to be so used to.

"Very well then –" he pretends to expand, grinning – "Like a girl."

"Thor!" Loki wails, still beaming and nuzzling his face against the cat – like softness of the collar – "Be nice".

"Loki you look like a beautiful princess, as well you know." He sighs affectionately. Loki nearly squeals –

"The prettiest princess that every princessed?"

"The – prettiest –" Thor tries to echo an affirmative but cannot bring himself to be quite that nauseating – "Oh shut up Loki, you're perfect and you know it."

On days like today Loki _does _know it and later, on his knees in front of Thor, still wearing the coat but now nothing else, Thor cannot even pretend that Loki does not look _gorgeous _in it.

_x_

Then there's the sushi.

Loki becomes obsessed with sushi, drawn to the colourful sushi carousels like a moth towards a flame. He continually drags Thor into what seem to Thor to be tiny restaurants made for children, for he has to duck to get through the door and feels beyond all measure awkward and enormous perched up on one of the stools that he grumbles are not made for someone his size.

"No Thor," Loki agrees – "_nothing _is made for people your size you great enormous oaf," he punctuates this by leaning across and pecking Thor on the cheek in a manoeuver that makes Thor cringe, convinced that nobody should be able to move like that in one of these stools without falling right off. Yet Loki glides into these places like a breeze, perching himself on the stools like he has been doing nothing but frequent sushi bars his entire life.

It is an exciting and tasty game to Loki to pile up the stacks of coloured plates and bowls in front of him, Thor's astonishment growing with each one Loki nibbles –

"I don't understand," he finally cracks. "This is not real food made for human people! This is – this is _samples _of food – where's the quantity? Where's the main course? What in the name of crap do I do with these?" He waves his chopsticks emphatically until Loki pushes his hand gently down onto the table, afraid he might put out somebody's eye.

"You're an uneducated buffoon," Loki groans – "Here, try some." Before Thor can object, Loki has stuffed a sashimi roll into his horrified mouth. Thor swallows it manfully, looking like he might be ill.

"It's _cold!" _he wails in horror.

"It's delicious," Loki retorts emphatically – "Here, at least try something chocolaty and scrumptious." He plonks a dessert down in front of Thor, who stares at it nonplussed and suspicious –

"It looks like a ball sack," he pronounces.

"For gods sake!" Loki groans, nearly but not quite face palming – "Just close your eyes and eat it!" Thor does.

"It _tastes _like a ball sack!"

"Yes," Loki sighs, shimmering with sarcasm - "Yes, of course it does because I so frequently stuff my balls with chocolate and wrap them in rice paper."

"Oh, is that what that is –"

"Fine" Loki pretends to sulk – "You know what, next time I'll get somebody else to do this with me. Tony has half an ounce of class and I bet _he _likes sushi."

Loki smirks to himself, knowing this is just the dig to make Thor take him every time. Thor _does _shut up instantly, even picking up the tab without complaining when Loki turns out to have single-handedly consumed nearly one hundred dollars' worth of sushi in one sitting.

Later, that evening, after consuming an entire twenty inch pizza as ill-manneredly as he can in front of Loki's horrified face and having stewed about it gently for the past few hours, he tells Loki what a manipulative little shit he is for bring up Tony-fucking-Stark every time he wants to get his own way. Loki pouts at this but cannot argue that he does so.

In fact, Tony Stark is becoming a bone of contention no matter how many times Loki insists upon how much he detests the man, in fact he comes home almost every day from rehearsals with some new gripe against him. Thor has only met the man once and that once was enough to want to throw him through the scenery he chews – as Loki has put it - with such reckless abandon every time he catches sight of a stage.

Tony Stark, star of Broadway and leading star in the play of his own life, a play he is fully convinced nobody can get enough of watching. Director's pet as well, as Loki spits one evening, after a miserable rehearsal session in which you would have thought it was Stark and not Fury who was in charge of the entire production. A dyed in the wool luvvie who calls everyone _honey _and _darling _whilst being over touchy–feely and bitching about them behind their back.

It was the tendency to be overly tactile that fist really got Thor's hackles rising. Stark had been condescending towards Loki from the start, as Thor had feared at least somebody would be – he was, after all a nobody, from nowhere. He had demonstrated this in typical Stark fashion by swinging between ignoring Loki completely and, when conversation between them was utterly vital, being excruciatingly endearing towards him, leaning in too close, hands and perfume everywhere. Thor had not realised quite how possessive he was over Loki until the first time he had observed this and had to restrain himself from dragging Stark away and punching him repeatedly whilst screaming that Loki was _his, _his alone and nobody else got to touch him, _ever. _

To make it worse Loki seemed to tolerate this, and later complained to Thor that he _had _to at least try and work with the guy because there was supposed to be some kind of chemistry between their characters.

"People ship it," he shrugged – "Don't ask me."

"People _what _it?"

"Ship it – it's when people think two characters should be boning," he had explained, somewhat inaccurately.

"Oh," Thor had replied, frowning, somewhat confused – "I don't get it," he added.

"You don't have to get it Thor, just deal with it."

"I'm supposed to deal with you even behaving like you want to be _boning _with Tony- fucking- Stark?" Thor had yelled. It had led to their first violent argument upon the subject, followed shortly by a just as violent reconciliation. Loki had been shaken by Thor's apparently sudden possessiveness and annoyed by his clear lack of understanding of the theatrical world. Thor had adamantly maintained that he did not _want _any understanding of a world like that, thank you very much, and he liked it even less for threatening to take Loki away from him. Loki had thoughtlessly yelled at Thor, demanding to know why he was obsessed with the idea of people wanting to take him away from him. Thor had said nothing, not wanting to have to try and shout back with a lump forming in his throat. Loki had stared at him densely for a moment before all the argument went out of him.

"Shit," he had pronounced – "Shit, Thor I'm – I'm sorry, okay. You should have said –"

As Loki had sunk down in front of him in an attitude of suddenly submissive apology, Thor had not been able to stop himself grasping back at him needily, insisting at first with murmurs and then with brutal kisses that Loki was his and his alone and he would kill anyone who tried to take him away from him again. By the end of the night Loki had lost any misgivings he may have had about Thor's possessive streak, indeed he lies briefly awake smiling to himself and contemplating how best to bring it out again in the future.

Which does not mean he does not now feel ever so lightly guilty for having made Thor furious over the same issue, ever so slightly on purpose, once again. He simply shrugs at Thor's outburst in a way he knows will infuriate, waiting patiently, half watching Thor as he struggles to keep his annoyance under control – and fails as Loki knows he will –

"Maybe if Tony Stark is so wonderful you should go marry _him,_" he snaps eventually.

"I didn't say _wonderful,_ did I?" Loki puts on a wounded face, pretending not to understand at all where this comes from – "Geesh, over – react much?"

"It is monstrously unfair of you to bring up something you know will annoy me simply to win whatever petty point you wish to make."

"Oh yes, absolutely, I'm the one who's being petty."

"I have every right to be annoyed when you are constantly implying that you prefer that idiot over me!"

"Oh for gods sake, I implied no such thing, though I might if you don't get over it –"

"Get over it?" Thor yells – "I should simply "Get over" the threat of losing you to that imbecile, is that what you're saying?"

"Firstly -" Loki is surprised to find himself getting genuinely angry back, though he cannot say he does not quite enjoy it – "there's no threat. Secondly the biggest imbecile I can see here is looking at me right now and last of all – yes you –"

"Shut up!" Thor yells, jumping up and pulling Loki up from his cross legged posture on the floor by the front of his shirt – "Shut up Loki, so help me I'll –"

"You'll what?" Loki spits, not certain whether he is shaking more in fear or arousal and Thor's temper – "Hurt me? Go ahead. Be my guest, join the club, do you think I –"

"_I love you, _you asshole, don't you dare pull that shit on me, bad enough you twist my every word to suit yourself without thinking so little of me –"

"And what do you think of _me _brother?" Loki spits back – "To so constantly assume I will just leave with whatever else comes along?"

"You're _mine _Loki," Thor snarls in a fierce whisper – "_Mine, _and I will make you know it no matter what."

Loki shakes in Thor's grasp, but his eyes close in a twisted bliss for it is what he has wanted to hear. What he always wants to hear, though he baits Thor into it rather than liking to ever admit to anything. When Thor's lips crash into his, he kisses back with teeth and curling lips, arms snaking around Thor's neck, pressing into Thor hard, cock already aching, unable to keep a faint smile from the lips that continue to attack his brother's, hungry and demanding as Thor's own. Thor feels the smile and knows he has been played, again. He wonders if he will ever stop falling for it. He wonders if he will ever want to stop falling for it. It does nothing to lessen how desperately he wants Loki right now, to take, to claim, to brand every inch of him as his if he could.

"I hate you Loki," he growls against his mouth.

"Fine" Loki whispers back – "just fuck me while you do it."

Thor glares at him and pushes him back hard enough to send him onto the floor on his back, both getting Loki where he wants him and venting his frustration at always wanting him even when to do so does mean giving Loki exactly as he wants. Always, he thinks with a sigh, exactly as Loki wants. It does not make him any more inclined to go gently on him. Loki stares up at him from the floor, gasping for breath and grinning all at once, all teeth and sly tongue, fire and starlight in his eyes. God he is beautiful. He half leans up on his elbows, starting to drag his shirt off. Thor drops down, slapping his hands away so he can yank his shirt off himself. Loki groans at the feel of Thor's knuckles pressing into his lower abdomen as those rough hands unbuckle his belt and divest him furiously of the rest of his clothing.

Thor looks down at Loki, naked beneath him, his eyes dark, skin so pale and close to perfect that just looking at him could undo him, he runs his fingers and hands savagely across the pale skin, wishing that his touch could mark it and the rougher he strokes the deeper Loki's sighs until he is truly scratching his nails into that perfection, glorying in the red marks left behind that claim that territory as his own.

"Mine," he growls. Loki grins and it alarms Thor how much this makes him want to hit him, but Loki always has been good at reading his thoughts, even the ones he denies himself –

"_Do it," _he whispers and when Thor frowns, not wanting to admit either what he was thinking or what Loki is allowing, spells it out for him patiently – "_hit me". _Angry and aroused as he is, there is too much restraint, too much inherent good in Thor to really hurt Loki, however much the sicker side of him wants to.

"Loki –" he starts to object, wanting to be sure this is not a strange self destructive streak in Loki that should not be fed. Loki half whimpers, half snarls, not wanting Thor to be having this sudden kick in the backside from his tedious moral compass –

"Just fucking do it Thor," he growls – "You know you want to". Thor does, but that, he tries to think, is not the point. Then Loki offers the final shot –

"Stark would do it". Thor slaps him savagely in the face. Loki groans and gently cries out but the sigh of pleasure that escapes his lips is unmistakable and Thor does it again, slapping Loki's face back to the other side. Loki cries out aloud this time and moans with pleasure at the sweet sharp stinging, as his eyes prick with tears. Thor's skin shakes, electrically and his cock hurts him half to death and when Loki thrusts his hips up towards him to remind Thor of his own erection Thor can hold back no longer.

"Stark cannot have you," he growls, a lower and more feral sound than he knew he was capable of making – "Nobody can have you –" he wrenches at his belt, freeing his cock which aches in relief to be released - "Nobody can touch you –" he drags Loki to him by the hips, shoving his legs back savagely and unceremoniously – "_Nobody,_" he re-iterates taking the bottle of lube from – he frowns – beside them on the floor? Did Loki put that there in anticipation of his every move. Loki grins up at him and shrugs and he knows that he did. He is almost tempted not to use it in punishment but the pit of clenching lust in his belly demands that he fuck Loki obscenely hard and he rubs the lube slowly and threateningly into his cock, glaring at Loki all the while so hard as to leave him in no doubt of his intentions.

"You're mine Loki," he states, lip twisting around it as he pushes his cock against him, nudging him open gently but insistently – "_Mine –" _he stops holding back and slams into him completely. Loki screams and claws at his back and Thor snarls and growls at the sound and the sensation, the pleasure of that heat and tightness flooding him utterly – "Fuck – Loki –" he gets out through gritted teeth before letting go and slamming into him brutally, a crashing wave of lust and pent up need for ownership raging out of him and into that body, that small part of all he wants to own for he needs every part of Loki to himself. When Loki's hand goes around his own cock it is enough to make him jealous, for this too is _his _and he grabs Loki's wrist in one hand, pushing it back onto the floor over his hand and grabbing his cock in the other, hissing _mine _once again. He catches hold of Loki's lips in his own, kissing as though to devour him, as if by consuming him whole he can keep him close and untouchable, pounding into him relentlessly until Loki is spasming in his hands, his eyes taking on the shine of extreme closeness to orgasm that he recognises well enough by now.

"No –" he snarls, removing his hand and slapping Loki gently this time – "When I say you can." Loki glares at him defiantly and he shoots back warning daggers in his eyes – "Whose are you, Loki?"

Loki gets the game and grins, not prepared to give in that easy.

"_Loki –_" Thor growls, not about to give Loki his orgasm without getting what he wants, but unsure how much longer he can hold his off, Loki feels so exquisite beneath and around him, so small and fragile, naked when he is almost entirely clothed. Loki shakes his head stubbornly, desperate to come now but at least as stubborn as Thor.

"_Whose are you, Loki?" _Thor roars, the vibrations of it too much for Loki to hold out against –

"Yours," he whimpers, almost sobbing – "Always yours."

Thor relaxes in gratification, placing a tender hand back around Loki's aching cock –

"Good," he purrs – "Good little brother, you can come for me –" he thrusts in hard and fast, struggling still to speak – "Come for me Loki," he chokes out and, hating that it is on demand but incapable of doing otherwise Loki comes, screaming Thor's name, eyes streaming as Thor pounds into him in a final volley of thrusts before coming inside of him bellowing and so immensely as to feel his own wet heat trickle out around his cock, Loki's own come all over his hands. As he subsides, sinking down onto Loki, he presses these fingers to Loki's lips, those lips parting pliantly for him and Loki not losing eye contact as he licks his own juices from Thor's fingers. Thor watches him adoringly, pulling him up into his lap and cradling his soft, boneless form while Loki re-learns how to breathe.

"Loki –" Thor murmurs, hushed and over –awed – "My Loki, my beautiful baby brother, my life, what have you done to me?"

"I'm…. sorry?" Loki manages through the lovely soft haze in his brain. Thor cradles him brokenly, leaning back against the wall –

"You destroy me, my Loki," he murmurs softly, kissing the dark head against his chest. Loki looks up at the emotion in Thor's voice and Thor is startled by the naked honesty in his eyes, almost impossible to believe –

"No-one's taking me away Thor," Loki says so gently the moment feels breakable as spun glass – "I'm yours. I don't want anyone else. I never did. You have to – trust me."

Trust – Loki? It is almost unthinkable, Loki is amazed by his own suggestion, amazed, afraid and shocked to realise he means it. Thor smiles at the very notion and suspects, for the first time – that he will.

_x_

**Okay I'm sorry, the plot really did get completely away from me, I promise I will pick up it's pretty broken pieces in the next chapter and I hope that what I lost in atmosphere and storyline I made up for in porns! **

**Also hope I didn't offend any Iron Man fans – I can just really picture Diva-Luvvie-Tony far too well. I don't actually hate the guy I just really don't dig FrostIron….in case yous didn't pick up on that! **

**Also Thor's reaction to sushi = my reaction to sushi. True fact. **


	4. Chapter 4

**In which I actually remember to write some plot and things all go a tad weird (cause that's what often happens when I try to plot!)**the floor, gasping for breath and could

**4.**

"So I can do just one night a week?" Loki grins, leaning over the bar, enjoying how well this is going.

"You can."

"And I can sing anything I want? Seriously? I mean – I can do Gaga?"

"If you must. Yes anything. Anything with one exception."

Loki raises an eyebrow.

"My Chemical Romance," Heimdall adds, utterly deadpan, well aware that Loki dies a little inside just to be reminded of that incident, though he nods glumly in agreement of the terms.

Heimdall has been trying, gently and then less gently, to persuade Loki to come and sing at _The Lokasenna _again ever since Thor started work there a week ago; for though the club is back up and functioning, with actual clientele again, it is still only halfway back to what it was when Loki was there the first time. It is the one thing in all the worlds Heimdall does not know – but he does not why the place does not work without Loki. Only that it does not.

Even his presence has helped though, and he has been in day after day since Thor started working there, though after the bizarreness of his first visit Thor has been seeing to it that he spends less time there.

_x_

_It was the pillar, the one that should not have been there. The one that made nineteen. The glass pillar in the centre of the club that pulsed with a strange crazy pink light. Loki had been drawn to it like a moth to a flame the first time and the second time he visited Thor had not been able to keep him away. The pillar ran throughout, straight down the room like a bolt of light and in the very centre, where the ground beneath the flooring was grew a rose. A rose that seemed to breathe, pink and red and gold and pulsing light. A rose that had been there since before the club appeared and which had remained there, unharmed, structured into the architecture as though the club had built itself around the flower. _

_Did the flower sing? Some maintained that it sang. Loki could hear it ringing in his ears, as the days wore on from further and further away it seemed. It was better when the bar was full and he was sat at it with a glass in his hand but it was still a steady background hum. And then when you looked at the rose you never wanted to look away. You wanted to bathe in that sweet pink wash of humming light forever. _

_Thor insisted he could not hear it, Heimdall would not comment, but to Loki the call was hypnotic and insistent and that first day, when he first beheld the rose, he had dropped to one knee by the glowing glass pillar, one hand and his forehead pressed against the glass in a fervour of wanting. Thor had looked and found it pretty, curious, beautiful even. He had not understood what held Loki so transfixed and Loki could not explain. _

_When he had put a hand on Loki's shoulder and suggested gently, almost reverently – for you fell into that tone in the presence of the rose – that they come away now, Loki had snarled up at him with a sudden flashing animal expression that had startled him and yet seemed somehow more understandable here than elsewhere. _

"_Imagine –" he had murmured to himself, his voice far away, as though he had been hypnotised – "So much power. To wield so much power –" _

_His eyes, glassy and pink in the light had frightened Thor, as had the distance in his voice –_

"_I want it," he whispered fervidly, his fingers stroking at the glass as though of their own accord._

"_Loki precious, come away," Thor had insisted tenderly, stroking the back of his neck, guiding him to his feet, half expecting Loki to fight him. He whimpered a little but did not and as Thor turned him around and back towards the bar he had had blinked, stopped, frowned, asked Thor if he had just done something stupid and shrugged the whole thing off._

_Since then he had steered away from the pillar and the rose, reassured by Heimdall when he had asked him what the fuck that thing was all about anyway and Heimdall had shrugged and replied that it could have strange effects on people, it was not just Loki. Although in truth he had never seen someone affected in quite that way. _

_Thor keeps an eye on him regardless and they have avoided any further concerns._

___x_

"What's wrong with "My Chemical Romance,"" frowns Thor, coming out of the kitchen now up and functioning behind the bar, bearing two large platters of spicy chicken wings. Heimdall turns to look at him in a way that suggests he is restraining himself from reeling off a list and Loki just groans melodramatically, sinking his forehead to the cool of the counter top –

"You wouldn't understand man – you weren't there!" he moans, because there is no way he wants to seriously re-visit that night that was so bad he lost all ability to hold a tune.

"Heimdall, two chicken wings," Thor adds.

"Ooh those are mine!" Loki grabs for them – "On the house right Heimdall?"

"Loki, you are taking ridiculous advantage of how much Heimdall wants you to perform here. He needs you. Be nice."

"I _am _nice," Loki grins winningly and starts nibbling through the chicken wings at a rapid rate at the same time – "Also taking advantage – but _of course." _He leans further across the bar to kiss Thor, who smiles and kisses him back while Heimdall audibly sighs and walks away to the furthest end of the bar, entirely in the manner of one who is utterly done with both of these idiots. Indeed he cannot believe he is not.

"Shouldn't you be rehearsing?" Thor adds. Loki has been draped across the bar for over half an hour now.

"I stormed out," he shrugs, though he announces it a little sheepishly.

"Actors," Heimdall sighs, in one of those whispers they could have heard from the other end of the club.

"Stark again?" Thor is sympathetic, all the more so each time he receives these reassurances that Loki is well and truly as pissed off with the man as he is.

"Always" Loki nods – "What is _this?" _he adds, as Heimdall pushes a beautifully layered, rainbow coloured cocktail across the bar at him – "It's _beautiful," _he adds, eyes big and reflecting the sparkling crystalline colours of the class.

"I call it _The Bifrost,_" Heimdall says. Loki takes a sip, siphoning off the red layer

"Mmm" he smile, nodding approvingly – "Strawberry". When the next layer is orange and the next lemon Loki gets more and more excited – "Okay Heimdall you win, these are amazing- just pay me in these! Thor?"

He hands Thor the small amount left in his glass Thor shakes his head and smiles –

"Loki, you know I can't when I'm working."

"You are such a do- gooder," Loki moans affectionately – "Anyway yeah, I don't think I can take any more of his shit. I'm gonna quit."

"You say that every week."

"Yes but this time –"

"You mean it – yeah you say that too."

Loki glares, pouts, runs through a variety of petulant expressions before sighing –

"Fiiiiine," he groans – "I'm not gonna quit".

"Well done" Thor smiles, stroking him fondly around the neck as he does every single time they have this conversation – "Now you know what to do next".

Loki glares down at the floor.

"_Loki!" _Thor growls softly.

"I gotta stab Tony in the tits?" Loki looks up hopefully.

Thor looks at him steadily until he gives in. Loki hates that he can do this to him every time – make him do the right thing. Make him – gods forbid – be a good person. Hates it, loves it, loves Thor for it and is truly, when he stops to take a look at himself, somewhat scared of it.

"I gotta go back and apologise to Director Fury _again," _he sighs, like a naughty schoolboy, pushing up off of his bar stool. Thor takes his hand gently before he moves away entirely, kissing his sticky fingers gently like the first time they met. It has become something of a gentle running joke between them now, though no less true that Thor is as besotted now as ever he was then.

"I'll come by pick you up when I'm done?"

Thor grins affirmative as he heads back into the kitchen, wondering exactly when his life got so perfect.

_x_

_There's a field of roses, roses seeping through the grass like blood. Green and red and the sky thundering overhead. Loki stands in the field, in the shadow of the tower, an inexplicable sense of terror coursing through him. He cannot move to run though he does not know what from. Whatever the evil is, it is in here with him, it always has been and he cannot believe he did not see it himself. He is green amongst the red, cloak fluttering behind him without any breeze like a great malignant bird- and are those horns coming out of his head? His shadow is monstrous and pointed, and here in the shade he should not be seeing it at all. The sky rumbles overhead with no lightning and no rain and the beast in his belly growls. The sceptre falls from his hands and turns to more roses at his feet, the perfume is everywhere, sick and cloying and more and more like blood with every moment that passes or does not pass in the swirling yet stagnant place. Loki looks down at his hands, wondering how and when they became so slippery he could no longer keep hold of the staff and his hands are red, blood dripping and then streaming from his fingertips into the ground, the flow become greater and greater until it is washing down his arms and forming rivers in the field of roses. He is drowning in blood and roses and it is all his own doing. He is not safe, he has never been safe –_

Loki wakes up with a jolt, head jerking involuntarily. He does not quite scream but sucks in a breath so loud it is almost a cry. He sits up in bed, turning on the light and staring down at his hands in fear. They are fine, pale and calmingly not blood stained. He takes another deep breath, closing his eyes as the here and now rushes reassuringly back –

"Loki –" Thor mumbles, turning over as he stirs, half asleep still but blinking when he sees Loki sat up, eyes wide, staring down at himself as though in shock. It wakes him up quickly – "Loki what is it?"

Loki drops his hands, turning to Thor, opening his mouth to say _just a dream _and swallowing hard instead, that feeling of being past all redemption, of having done something unforgivably bad still sat upon him as though it belongs there. Thor sees only that Loki looks scared and, after all, this is not the first time he has woken with nightmares; he pulls him gently down and to him, Loki curling into Thor's chest, taking strength from his solidity and allowing him to stroke through his hair and down his back over and over while he trembles.

"Hush Loki, hush little brother –" Thor murmurs a stream of reassurance, meaningless but comforting to Loki nonetheless – "It's okay Loki it was just a dream –"

"There were –" Loki starts to say _roses,_ realising how very scary that just does not sound and starts again – "I was _horrible _– evil – I – I don't know – Thor would you love me no matter what I did?"

"Why Loki, what could you do that would be so bad?"

Loki does not want to think it through logically, he wants simple blind reassurance –

"_Would _you?"

"You know I would."

Usually Loki does, right now the uncertainty scratches at him like a persistent itch.

"Yeah," he lies, though it will be true again in the morning – "Yeah I know." He turns over in Thor's arms, holding his hands in place against his own chest where those arms wind around him. Thor kisses the top of his head, and is almost sleeping again when Loki's voice comes back out of the dark –

"Thor?"

"Hmm?"

"Would you love me if I was evil?"

"Loki –" he sighs, sleepily – "I'd have been a fool to ever reckon your moral compass into reasons why I love you."

"But _would _you."

"Yes," Thor says, so simply and so easily that Loki hears it well. Even so he lies awake for a long time after Thor has started softly snoring against his neck and only finds his way back to sleep when the first light breaks through the shadows of the room.

_x_

**Hopefully comments work this time – it seems AO3 was trying to eat some of the comments on the last chapter or the one before, I forget? Either that or I'm doing something wrong and this just totally sucks! I confess I have been neglecting it in favour of my Roman thing! Also yeah it's gone a bit weird but I do now know how it's gonna come together, anyway - here it is! :-)**

**I know it's a tad fluffy at present but I have a horrible feeling it's gonna start getting kinda dark….with fluffy interludes just to confuse! **


	5. Chapter 5

**5.**

Fragments of dream cut up the lengthening shadows with their bright flashing teeth. _Monsters_, Loki thinks, _my dreams are becoming monsters. So what am I? _He walks alone in the gathering dusk, slouching like he used to when he hit the road. There is something in the air tonight, something that frightens him, a Mary Poppins wind perhaps, threatening to blow him on.

Would he do that? He wonders – would he leave? Could a momentary restlessness like this carry his traitorous feet away from everything he has achieved, everything he has found. He wishes he knew himself well enough to know. Wishes he could trust himself to stay no matter what. Wishes he could trust himself to be himself no matter what. For all he has found, for all that he sees and recognises when Thor is there - when he is alone again he finds himself wondering once more who he could possibly be. The perfect web of streets trailing out around him is shattered in his eyes, as everything is on nights like this.

He digs his hands into his pockets, kicking at stones like the tramp he used to be. _Could you even have known me then? _he thinks bitterly – _what me was there to know? How? How can you say so surely you would love me whatever I was, when you have no idea what I could be? What I could do? How could you? I don't. _

He doesn't want to leave. He finds that certainty like a sure and comforting hand hold on a slippery slope. He thinks about moving on and it troubles him only a little. He thinks of doing it without Thor and feels a lurching sickness deeper than just in the stomach. But then he wonders at himself for even wondering such a thing and does it mean he does not love as he ought to love? As he says that he does, and thinks so definitely, feels so brightly and so warmly inside. Is he simply wrong inside and out?

_Nobody told me. _He thinks bitterly – _nobody told me how to love, nobody ever gave me a clue how it was supposed to work. _Do children learn this, normally, he wonders, is he missing some vital guidelines both to knowing himself and to functioning alongside another? Did this come from having no upbringing or does everyone feel this way? He tries to imagine Thor feeling this way, doubting himself the way he does, and the idea fits into nothing he can imagine.

But he loves this life. He knows, and cannot even find an argument – that he has never been happier. But never been happier does not have to mean everything is perfect – does it? He feels ungrateful for feeling this way-and hopelessly inadequate. Perhaps it _does _have to mean everything is perfect, perhaps that is how it is for everyone else who's dream comes true and he is simply fucking it all up, like he always does, the one thing he knows _really _well how to do. He kicks the sidewalk in childish aggravation, hoping he can make it hurt, humming a tune that halfway through he recognises as "Thank Goodness" and humming it as bitterly as he feels it deserves.

The theatre yes, he thinks, that too has crept into his life and become a glorious thing to attach itself to him, become a part of who he is now. And he loves it. How could he not. The backstage and the face paint, the story telling and the falsity. There is nothing in it that does not suit him perfectly. Yet he would still be himself without it wouldn't he. _Wouldn't he? _He wants to scream a cosmic _tell me! _to the skies, to shatter all the islands of Manhattan and put them back together again in a different order.

He would not be himself still without Thor, he knows that much. He never was. Never could be. Thor knows him better than he does, knew it from the first day he saw him in the club. Only in someone else's assurance of who he was could he ever have come to grips with himself even as much as he had. He's not sure what that counts for but god knows it's something. One hell of a something.

He looks down at his feet and sighs. Tomorrow these feelings will be gone, perhaps even sooner than tomorrow. But right now it feels like this melancholy is all there is. That it is the only light he looks good in. _Meh, _he thinks – _it always does. _He thinks about Thor, what he would say if he told him all of this – and feels like an incredible shit all over again – Thor would just be sad, would assume that _he _had done something wrong. He would make those worried puppy eyes until Loki felt like he had to pretend to smile just to make him stop. Then he feels guilty for pretending, for feeling like he was lying to Thor and it would all cycle round and round again.

And yes, here he is, nowadays, feeling _guilty _for lying.

Perhaps, he reflects, that is why he needs the theatre; to counter – balance all the damnable honesty that keeps creeping into his life.

He watches his shadow lengthen across the square until it starts to scare him, until it could be a creeping monster closing in on him and growing as it feeds. He half expects his shadow to have those curving horns and fluttering cloak of his dreams – so strongly as to see them there, just for a fraction of a second. He starts a little, just before his shadow looks like the one he knows best again. And why does it still feel like _his _in those split seconds when it looks so strange?

He shouts at himself angrily. He _really _has to stop this. He is, no shit, literally jumping at shadows here like the most incredible fucking jerk. An alarm from his pocket joins in the shout, reminding him that he is due at the club in ten minutes and he is at least twenty minutes away from it right now.

_x_

Heimdall is used to Loki being late. The fact that he knows exactly when and how Loki will arrive does not make him less late. He remembers the days of going round to knock on his trailer door before he had even become late just to warn him not to be. But all the precognition in the world cannot stop Loki from being late when he is going to be. It is, Heimdall thinks, one of his many curses; to see the future but not being to change it. He knows that Thor is worried though; he always is, however marginally Loki is late. He can hear the lack of whistling from the kitchen like a hole in the fabric of the club, can _feel _Thor's tension and almost see his worries visualised in Loki slipping away between his fingers like sand he fears he will never keep enough hold of. Thor comes out of the kitchen quietly, locking the door and settling into a bar stool to wait, trying desperately not to appear worried as an over – anxious parent but draining the first drink Heimdall slides him as quickly as he ever used to.

The lights on the stage never come on that night but the voice that drifts out of the darkness chills the warm gold of the club until the words could be calling out truths – that the _walls are closing in and the colours fade to black. _Heimdall feels a sense of the most un-nerving dysphoria – how could he not have seen Loki come in? and he sounds so far away tonight, barely visible with the only light on the stage a tremulous pink throb from the pillar of the rose. It occurs to Heimdall, not for the first time, that there is something not quite right with Loki at the moment.

It occurs to Thor as well, and when Loki comes up to the bar later he does not hesitate to voice it, like he voices everything else; so openly and honestly Loki cannot help but smile at his lack of guile.

"Loki, precious, are you alright?" Loki is a little stiff when he squeezes him, his cheek cold against his lips. Loki blinks hard as he sits down, shaking his head a little, fast to clear it –

"Yeah –" he says distantly, and then more firmly, forcing himself to smile, as much to convince himself as Thor – "Yeah I'm fine – strange day y'know? I missed you". It is not a lie, though Loki realises it only as the words are coming out of his mouth. It is not like he has spent his time fretting about missing Thor, it is not like he would normally dare either to do or admit something so needy. But he _has _missed him. He knows he would not have felt half as weird today if Thor had been there. Thor just smiles though, makes a sound that is nearly but not quite _aww _and kisses Loki again, this time deeply, tenderly, Loki can feel the coldness that is not quite just on his skin melt beneath those fingers and himself soften, falling into the kiss. When he pulls back and smiles his smile is real –

"Shut up Heimdall!" he adds.

"I do not believe I spoke," Heimdall says from nearby.

"You were going to tell us to get a room," Loki grins.

"When did you steal my sight Lie- Smith?"

"Heh, when you begged me to come back."

Heimdall very nearly mutters to himself as he refills their drinks.

"So what kind of strange?" Thor asks.

"Strange like – like something bad is going to happen," Loki says, frowning, not adding what he nearly lets slip out – _and like I'm going to be the one to make it happen. _

Thor knows better than to simply disregard Loki's intuitions and so does not try to brush the concern aside.

"You've had this feeling for a while." Loki nods –

"I guess it's not gonna go away until whatever it is happens."

"We will get through it Loki, whatever happens. You know we will."

Loki does not know, but he wants to and so he nods.

"And it _could _still be nothing," Thor adds hopefully, not to dismiss the idea, Loki knows, just to make sure all possibilities have been considered. He smiles and shrugs then groans aloud –

"You must think I'm such an idiot."

"Of course," Thor grins at him fondly – "But when has that stopped me?"

Loki smirks, wondering what it is about being insulted by your loved one that is always so reassuring.

"Come on," he hops down from the stool, sufficiently recovered to slap Thor on the arm on the way – "Let's go home."

_x_

As they head for home, Loki finds himself able to give Thor a version of the mood that has been plaguing him like a crow repeatedly glimpsed in the corner of his eye. It is a less serious version, certainly, a more – it-doesn't-really-matter version but it is close enough to the truth to be more than he expected himself to give. Thor says little, but squeezes Loki's hand as he walked and this cheesy simple shit shouldn't help, Loki thinks, gestures so plain and dumb as to be the stuff of a thousand sappy stories – but they work. They really do. Even on him.

With the telling of it of course, the mood dissipates, more and more the closer to home they get, so that by the time they round the last corner onto the street it has almost gone to the point where Loki starts to wonder if he has been lying all this time. Making the whole mood up, it feels so much better.

He did not want to be proven wrong from this. He would have loved it to be all made up, loved this ridiculous prescience to portend nothing as it usually did. As these feelings ought to do. But then on the corner he freezes, caught like a deer in the headlights as a drunk swerves out just slightly into the street to avoid lurching into him. Thor stops because Loki does, watching him with sudden prickling concern. These tramps are hardly a rare occurrence but this one stares at Loki, frowning in an alarmingly similar way to how Loki stares at him. Loki's head turns to follow the man down the road and his free hand digs into his pocket. He still carries a switchblade there, Thor knows, how his fingers used to curl around it at every rise in his mood. He has not done this in ages but Thor can see his fist clenching now through the pocket as he has not done in months. What he cannot see is how tightly Loki's fingers curl around the knife, how his thumb flicks at the catch, more intent behind the gesture than ever when it used to come to him more naturally. Loki follows the man's shambling walk until he is out of sight, the tramp's head twisting every few moments to look back over his shoulder at Loki.

When he is finally out of sight Thor hears Loki's breathing hitch, sees his chest rise and fall as he begins to breath as though he has held it this whole time – it is not far from the truth. Now when he does start to breathe it is fast and frightening.

"Loki –" Thor begins, but Loki's eyes are wild and far away and instead of asking he merely repeats Loki's name in a soothing purr, stroking the back of his neck until his breathing regulates again, taking his arm to ease him gently back into walking. Loki almost staggers, then follows as if in a dream, but thankfully he follows. When they are back in the comparative safety of the flat he finally turns to Thor, his face a cracked mask of frown lines as though everything in his countenance has blown apart and broken. He opens his mouth, but instead of words just a half panicked ragged breath comes out.

"Loki –" Thor asks, not losing contact where his hand rests on Loki's neck for a moment, afraid that Loki might just float away all together – "Who was that?"

He half expects Loki to cry or faint, but he does neither, just starts back incredulously as though he cannot quite, and certainly does not want to believe the truth of it. Thor has to bend in closer just to hear the one mangled word he manages to whisper out –

"_Laufey". _

_x_

**I seem to have done one of my weird sudden genre changes back into angst….I hope anyone still reading this is keeping up!**

**FYI, today Loki sang for you Sarah McLachlan (Sp?) "Black". It's depressing. Don't listen to it unless you have to! But hey look, I'm getting a handle on the plot now! :-)**


	6. Chapter 6

**Trigger warnings: References to child abuse, physical and sexual, nothing actively graphic but quite a bit of detail and, if you didn't guess already, Loki is still dealing with the trauma. If you wanna skip but still read this let me know and I'll fill you in. :-)**

**6.**

Loki does not even protest when Thor swings him into his arms and carries him over to the sofa like a child he is determined to take care of, whether they want it or not. Loki is not sure if he _does,_ but either way he cannot find it in himself to make an objection. Thor feels this and it scares him; Loki _always _makes objection – wherever he possibly can, and his ambivalence is frighteningly out of character.

"Laufey – your step – father?" he asks, wishing he could not be so clumsy but needing to clarify if he is at all able to understand what is going on. Loki nods, curling into a corner of the sofa and chewing on the knuckle of a finger. For the longest time he sits there, saying nothing, staring at nothing until Thor is close to panicking himself. Finally Loki does speak and his voice sounds so distant, so despairing that it does not make Thor feel any better.

"I thought I was safe," he says, flatly, his hands clenched into tight white fists – "God –" he punches the arm of the sofa savagely, his voice bitter now and so full of hate Thor almost wants to step back, not knowing where he is going to direct it – "I'm so stupid, I'm so _fucking _stupid –" Thor opens his mouth to say something, to cut Loki off before he can really get started. He knows Loki's anger by now and the fury and hate that churns along with it and he would rather see them directed, even unfairly, upon himself than have to see Loki turn it inwards any day. But it's already too late and Loki's torrent cannot be stopped –

"I'm not _safe –" _he spits – "I'll never be – I never _was. _God I'm such an idiot. Why'd you let me believe it Thor?" now he does turn it round to Thor, and it is not the relief either of them thought it would be – "Why'd you let me grow so _soft? _Like an idiot believing in fairy – tales I thought – I thought it could be over, but it's never over, _never – _what the _fuck –" _Loki breaks off not entirely knowing where he is going, just staring at Thor angrily with red rimmed eyes and gnarled fists, at which point Thor says the worst thing he could possibly chose to say –

"Loki – dearest – do you not think you're maybe over – reacting a little?"

"_Over reacting?" _Loki screeches – "_Over – reacting? _Do you have any idea – _any _idea what that asshole did to my life? Do you think he'll ever let me get away now he's seen me? God I thought I was stupid but you're the biggest fucking moron I ever –"

"Loki, Loki –" Thor stops himself before he lets himself say _It's okay _because if it's not the biggest and most common lie ever then it is still certainly the last thing anybody wishes to hear – "I _don't _know, I'm sorry – but that's because you never told me – and you don't have to – but are you so sure he even saw you, y'know maybe he just looked at you cause – I don't know – you were _there? _I mean, guy kinda looked like a useless hobo bum to me."

Somehow this makes Loki crack the faintest smile; even through the tears he does not remember shedding, that slipped down his face without him ever really actively crying;

"Yeah he always kinda was," he says, a little morosely but with evident pleasure in being able to abuse the man, however trivial it is – "But he recognised me, he'd have to for fuck's sake – I nearly killed the man – I -" he takes a deep breath, in which Thor gets up from his sitting position on the floor and Loki scowls –

"Oh fuck off –" he mutters – "You're gonna go just when I was about to tell you my lovely fucking tale of woe?"

"No – I was going to get you some tea, so you can tell me in less distress."

"_Tea?"_ Loki's eyebrows crawl so high up his forehead they could almost take flight – "Seriously? When you're all lame over your stupid childhood issues do you crave tea?"

Thor frowns, hovering just outside the kitchen door –

"Loki you _always _crave tea –" It is becoming a certain truth since arriving in New York – Loki's tea obsession has become almost British and they have a collection now of over half a dozen different kinds in the kitchen – "Maybe you shouldn't –"

"If you say _drink _I swear by god I will throw this whole living room at your stupid, stupid head – think about _your _qualifications to make that statement for a moment –" Thor does and shrugs; it's a fair enough comment. He continually marvels at Loki's ability to say really rather mean things in an almost affectionate tone of voice.

"Now –" Loki continues, smiling sweetly – "get into that fucking kitchen and get me a fucking gin, won't you?"

Thor comes back out a moment later, handing Loki the bottles of gin and tonic and a glass. Loki looks at the tonic scornfully, makes a _pfft _sound of disgust and pours himself a neat gin. Thor rolls his eyes a little but does not question it. Loki swallows half the drink, grimaces and looks down into his glass, swirling the rest of it.

"I was seven when the Laufeys adopted me," he says into the glass, not looking at Thor – "I must have had about ten minutes of thinking it might be a good thing before they convinced me otherwise. Five years in that god-forsaken orphanage. Can't think why no-one wanted me, I must have been just too lovely a child to handle." He snorts. Thor fights manfully to keep the pain from his face – five years in the orphanage on the other side of town from where he lived – he still feels like there could have been something he could have done. He does not mention it, refuses to even look like he is thinking about it – suspects that Loki deeply does not need his own grief right now. Loki's words come out like a speech, like he is telling somebody else's story and cannot quite feel it -

"Maybe that was _why _he picked me – 'cause I was_ such_ a little shit there was always some excuse for him. Maybe because the little harem he'd formed of his own kids was getting too old to be of interest – you get my drift. I don't know. I don't care. I just know that if that's _family, _it sucks more balls than I did –" he keeps his tone quite carefully flippant, the better to keep it all at a distance – "I dunno –" he answers a question Thor has not asked – "I took maybe six years of that crap until one night –" Loki drinks the rest of the glass quickly and Thor tops him up in silence – "Thanks. One night he comes to my room and I know that this time he's expecting more than for me just to get on my knees. I don't know – I don't know why I didn't do something sooner – but it was too much, I already knew I was a major loser for not getting out of there sooner and no amount of telling myself I was just a kid will tell me otherwise – so don't –" he looks at Thor then sharply, and looks away just as quickly – he can't make eye contact, not for this – "But I cracked. No-one was going to do that to me – I fought him like I didn't know I could fight and when I pretended to give in it was only to reach the best object that came to hand and hit him over the head with it. It was a book. A hardback –" Loki's eyes grow a little glazed at the surreal quality this detail holds in his head – "_Adventures of Tom Sawyer_. Seriously – I couldn't tell you where I was, what room or time of day the bad things happened in – but I remember that. I still _have _that book. Anyway –" he shakes his head a little as though to clear it before continuing –

"He went down like a sack of flour. I don't think I'd ever been more scared. I didn't know if he was dead or alive but I didn't stop around to find out – I threw some stuff together – random goddamn stuff, barely any of it useful or what I should have packed but at least I remembered to raid the cookie jar of savings – and I got the hell out of there. Of course, I ended up doing everything he wanted from me over the next few months just to get my lifts from town to town - but it didn't matter. Somehow, I could convince myself that this was some kind of choice and that –" he frowns, hoping it makes as much sense out loud as it does in his head – "It made the difference. Kept me sane –" he chuckles humourlessly – "_Sane,_" he echoes – "If you say so. But I never looked back. I forced myself to not remember, lied to myself until I believed it. I just don't know –"

"Loki –" Thor takes Loki's hands in his, both of his large enough to enfold those slender hands completely, even holding the glass between them – "We will get through this I swear. I won't let anyone hurt you – never ever again. You _are _safe with me Loki, I promise you –"

"But I'm not always _with _you Thor!" Loki protests, for the concept of safe beneath the wright of recollection is too much just to take in – "You can't protect me twenty four seven! And you can't protect me from myself! Do you think I'm afraid that _he'll _hurt _me?_"

Thor gently puts Loki's glass down on the floor and gathers Loki to him, as though by holding him close enough he can indeed keep him safe forever.

"It will be well Loki," he murmurs soothingly, rubbing Loki's back as he holds him – "I know you."

"_How?"_ Loki tries to protest but his face is muffled in Thor's shoulder and it comes out weaker than he had meant to object. "_I_ don't even know me. It's like – there are so many winds pulling at me they'll blow me away – I'll lose sight of everything, you, myself – I'm scared Thor – I'm just –"

"_Loki _– I'll fight the wind that tries to take you from me, I'd kill anything that tried, you know that –" he breaks off, remembering that he did not fight hard enough once and truly Loki has no reason to know that he would. Loki senses him pause and pulls away to frown at him.

"What? Oh no, Thor –" he sees what Thor is thinking, reading him like a large print book –"No no no no no – don't you dare Thor, don't you fucking dare – you blame yourself for this and I'll kick your fucking ass, okay?" He can see the uncertainty still skulking in Thor's eyes and this time he is the one curling his hand tight around Thor's neck and bringing them down forehead to forehead.

"Would it make you feel better?"

"Maybe. But – no," Loki shakes his head and his own sensibility, pressing messy warm kisses to the side of Thor's face. "You're my brother Thor and – god help me being the one saying this but – I love you. Appreciate that I'm the one saying this and don't blame yourself all over me okay? Please? If you –" Loki takes a deep breath, to get this out while he is just about drunk enough to dare say it – "If you promise me not to blame yourself _I'll _trust you to keep me safe like you said – okay? Maybe?"

Thor looks back at him, such a range of confused, helpless expressions crossing his face that Loki laughs a little, tense and nervous.

"Thor please just say yes, 'cause I'm more scared of this than I am of him or even me, for gods sake –"

"Yes then," Thor nods – "Yes Loki I promise. God –" he laughs and as he moves back a little to look at Loki – "Where's that gin?"

"Oh thank god," Loki breathes, handing him the bottle – "Something I can help with."

Thor clinks his bottle against Loki's glass and leans back into the sofa with it. Loki settles back against Thor as Thor is _his _sofa, soothing his restless thoughts on the calmer tide of his brother's heartbeat. Thor is warm and soft and somehow, ridiculously, reassuring. Almost so much so as to take away his fears. Almost.

_x_

**I did say I thought it might get kinda dark! Um….didn't know how much so until Loki started talking. As pretty much always I promise a happy ending and lighter chapters to come amongst the darker ones! :-)**


	7. Chapter 7

**And cause I can't keep a consistent genre from chapter to chapter of this – this chapter is really quite light and fluffy! I think Loki kinda needs it after the last one!**

**7.**

With the rapid approach of the opening night of "Cats", and without seeing the tramp who had scared Loki so much that day again in the weeks that follow, Loki actually does begin to relax again. Never quite to the point he had reached before; Thor continues to walk him to rehearsals and is there, waiting, to pick him up at the end of each one, and when he is the one at work and Loki is not Loki spends all his time either in the club as well or sits at home reading and very often singing to himself. One evening Thor comes to home to find Loki practising make – up in front of the mirror and what is more to the point –

"Loki? Why do you look like a great big cat?"

"Miaow?" Loki replies, archly, turning from the mirror and prowling over to Thor in a distinctly feline manner – "Do you like it?" he purrs, rubbing his head up under Thor's chin – "I'm practising my make-up and moving in the costume –"

"Oh thank god" Thor breathes – "For a moment there I thought you were going to try and get me into some really appalling new kink –"

"We-ll –" Loki stretches out on the bed, moving for all the world just like a rather arrogant cat, rolling onto his back and playing with the air – "Maybe. Tickle me behind the ears and I'll let you scratch my belly?"

"Oh god," Thor groans – "I don't think I can handle bestiality _and _incest – at the same time anyway."

"Well you're not getting the bestiality without it –" Loki pouts – "I don't share any more than you do."

"Do you maybe want to stop being a cat for a minute and come with me to the kitchen? I have something for you –"

"Ooh, is it a saucer of milk?"

"No. Bad kitty."

"Is it your –"

"_Loki!" _

"Okay, okay I'm coming Gimme a sec."

Loki darts into the bathroom and Thor stands patiently listening to the clattering and humming that accompanies the removal of clothes and make up –

"You could have done that in a bit!" he calls. Loki sticks a half washed face that still has whiskers around the door –

"You want me to not be a cat, I _have _to look like not a cat! Really –" the bizarre little face disappears again – "Don't rush a genius."

Thor sighs with a tolerance that is coming gradually to be born out of familiarity, takes off his shoes and goes into the kitchen to wait. When Loki appears ten minutes later in a dressing gown Thor is sat at the kitchen table stroking a latte, a mug of earl grey sat in front of the opposite chair. Loki sits down in the chair, beaming –

"How do you always know what tea I want even when I haven't told you?"

"It's my magic."

"So what did you get me? I like things!"

"I know," Thor hands Loki an envelope which Loki frowns at curiously, then opens to find two tickets to _Miss Saigon _on Broadway, tomorrow night. Loki squeals, leaps up and launches himself into Thor's lap. He has spent the past month, nearly, wailing about the fact that even though he is shortly to appear in one himself he has never yet been to see a show on Broadway.

"Well I would not get too excited. I hear it's very tragic – you'll probably cry." Thor cautions.

"I will not! I never cry!" Loki lies blithely.

"You're in a terribly good mood today," Thor observes. He has missed these moods in Loki and yes, has been prepared to do anything he can to bring them back.

"It's you. You're my lucky star," he launches into the song of that title from _Singing in the Rain _and barely stops singing for the rest of the evening until Thor has to actively take it upon himself to gag him, at which point Loki finds he does not mind being silenced nearly as much as he thought he would.

_x_

The next evening sees Thor dressing half way smart, _for once _as Loki remarks, and Loki wishing extremely vocally that he could wear a pretty dress and get away with it.

"You always could," Thor sighs.

"Darling, I'm fabulous but I'm not that fabulous." Loki grins, emerging from the bedroom looking utterly dashing and adjusting a swirly green and black waistcoat that provides the only colour in his ensemble – "How'd I look?" he smiles, slightly nervously, pulling awkwardly at his cuffs.

"Beautiful –" Thor smiles and Loki can read the truth of it through the stars in his eyes.

"You're – wearing jeans," Loki frowns, disapprovingly in return.

"Loki you already got me in a shirt _with buttons –_" Thor growls – "Don't push it."

Instead Loki pushes him, towards the door and the first taxi cab they have actually ordered since they got here, and there is a smile of greater approval than his voice would ever allow as he watches Thor fondly from behind.

_x_

The theatre suits Loki utterly, Thor reflects; the trappings and the glamour as well as the stage itself. He preens between chandelier and plush carpeting, dazzling in the other worldly crystal light as though he is other worldly himself. He even moves differently; walking with an elegance and poise that in Thor's eyes looks almost regal. He wonders where Loki ever learned this, and himself feels shabby and graceless in comparison. Loki breezes his way through the crowds around the bar; returning to Thor with their drinks, moving like something magical amongst the otherwise jostling crowds. It is almost as if they seem to part before him in deference to his beauty. Thor wonders for the millionth time how something so lovely ever came to be his. He wonders how Loki can ever doubt his own perfection and seeks in his head – and continually fails – to reconcile this Loki with all the other Lokis he has encountered since they met; the lounge singer, the hobo, the Alice Cooper impersonator, the angry vicious Loki and the trembling little boy, his brother. There is not a single one of them that defines him, Thor realises, for he is composed of all of them as he suspects we may all of us be multiple – though Loki more than anyone. And then there is this one; the fairy tale prince he never even dreamed of, whose existence still seems to hang upon the fragile shimmering line between reality and fantasy. This fantasy has no sooner handed him his drink than with a contented sigh opens its mouth and announces far too loudly –

"There's just something about the theatre that makes me want to fuck."

Thor almost splutters on his drink and fends off a scandalised glare from the mother of a family who are standing waiting a little too closely nearby – dashing her one of his most charming smiles. Loki follows where he looks and ruins everything by raising an eyebrow at the lady and adding terribly casually –

"Oh, I'm sorry – doesn't it you?" he grins, with far more mischief and challenge than charm until Thor growls "_Loki!"_ softly through an attempt to not laugh and steers him gently and firmly away by the arm.

"Well it does me. I don't know what her problem is," comes a voice from behind them and they turn in surprise to find Tony Stark smiling genially with an extraordinarily pretty blonde girl on his arm wearing exactly the kind of dress Loki had been dreaming of. This is nothing like the Tony Loki has come to be unfortunately familiar with in the course of rehearsal; this is a gentleman, suited and smiling with a look that suggests he is prepared to be both charming and magnanimous and barely even patronising while he does so. He turns to the lady –

"Pepper, this is Loki, our Mistoffelees and his – I want to say boyfriend? – Thor – I'm sorry I don't know what you do."

"Fiancé actually," Loki corrects as Thor shakes hands both with Tony and the lady.

"Is that right? I had no idea. Well congratulations, both of you."

"Yes it's a pleasure" Pepper adds – "Tony's failed to tell me so much about you. Oh, that's not a bad thing –" she adds quickly, seeing how this could be seen as an insult to them and not, as she intended it, to Tony – "I suspects it means you're altogether nicer than the usual reprobates he _does _tell me about."

Loki can't hold in the obvious question any longer –

"I have to say that's the most beautiful dress –" he begins.

"Oh do you like it? More to the point I suppose –" Pepper smiles a little, accurately reading the look in Loki's eye – "_Would _you like it? He never does let me wear the same dress twice."

"Right then, while the ladies talk dresses –" Tony turns to Thor smiling genially – "I have to say I didn't see you as the theatre type. Oh _into musical theatre _yes, but they're not always as compatible as they say."

"I'm not," Thor replies, somewhat awkwardly trying to come to terms with this entirely different Tony Stark – "Or – I didn't mean to be. It's hard to avoid, what with –" he indicates Loki with an affectionate incline of the head.

"You and Pepper should get together sometime. I imagine you could share a lot of the same woes. Now listen –" he adds – "We have a box booked for tonight, if you guys got last minute you're welcome to share –"

"Woah there!" Pepper butts in "Tony sweetie we have plans for that box remember?" Thor and Loki inch closer together as she raises into tiptoe to whisper in his ear.

"Yeah – um – she's right –" Tony turns back, a little red – "We have - plans – I take it back –"

Loki closes his eyes in dramatic pain while Thor's eyebrows traverse his forehead –

"I did _not _need to hear that!" Loki mutters.

"We'll – uh – leave you to your plans."

"Well – good –" Tony nods as the calls start to come for people to start making their way to their seats – "Thor, pleasure. See you kid."

As they head in their separate directions Thor and Loki blink in shocked silence for several moments. Eventually Loki says

"Well –" and Thor continues –

"Tony Stark is –"

"Straight!" Loki splutters.

"I was going to say _nice _but – that too!"

"I need to completely re-evaluate my entire knowledge of the world!" Loki groans as he sinks into his seat. Thor pats him gently on the hand, then keeps hold of his hand as the lights go down. Just before the show begins Loki smiles to himself blissfully –

"Pepper's giving me her dress," he whispers, in a tone that suggests this gives him comfort enough wherein to find all the re-evaluation of the world he could possibly need.

_x_

"I'm still gonna throw him out a window one day," Loki adds, as the lights come up for the interval, as though the whole first act has just been an interruption to their conversation beforehand.

"Loki –" Thor struggles, trying to make himself sound manly and not look as though he is fighting back tears and has been doing so ever since about ten minutes in – "Don't tell me you were thinking about that and nothing else through the whole first act!"

"No of course not," Loki scoffs – "The music is lovely, and the songs are –" Loki feigns a slight swoon towards Thor – "Just because I didn't cry like a big girl the whole way through "Sun and Moon," doesn't mean I was not –"

"I did _not _cry like a –"

"Oh you did!"

"Well I was thinking of you. Loki, that could have been us!"

Loki rolls his eyes;

"No I'm sorry, I don't buy all this entire – relationship – in – the – space - of – one – night stuff. I mean it sounds good but you can't can you? A relationship needs time, you have to live together, have some arguments, have some really trivial arguments, gripe about who does the washing up and the housework –"

"_I _do."

"Shut up. You know what I mean! A lifetime's a lifetime and a night is just a night, however big and Romantic it is you cannot "In one night love a lifetime's worth," or whatever it was - that's just balls."

"You saw that movie too?"

"It's a _good _movie. Sequel was better. But it's a terrible line. It's just not. I don't. I just don't."

"Are you done?"

"I'm done."

"You gonna gripe all through the second half too?"

"I'm not griping! I like it. But you won't see me start to cry!"

"You wanna bet?"

"I'll bet you my shiny new dress."

"Er – deal!"

The second act has no sooner started than half way through _Bui doi _Loki starts to sniff. Thor looks across at him, raising an eyebrow and Loki sticks his chin out stubbornly, but the attempt fails utterly and by the time they get to the line _half breeds from a land that's torn _he is sobbing so uncontrollably that he has to try and keep it down not to disturb the row behind them, clutches fiercely at Thor's hand until he almost crushes it and could not care in the slightest that he has lost the bet.

When the lights come up at the end Thor can hear Loki blowing his nose even through the applause and as they file out Loki bounces as though borne on a tide of music, clouds and billowing emotions.

"I want to be in it!" he sighs.

"I don't see you as a Chris."

"No you idiot I want to be Kim!"

"Loki no offense but they'd never –"

"I _know _I know!"

"And as it is I believe you owe me a dress."

Loki pouts and glares –

"Well alright but only if you promise to –"

"Keep it!" Thor shakes his head, knowing where this is going – "You'll look much better in it than me!"

"Yep."

Loki does not stop smiling all the way home, feeling like a cat that got the cream after all.

_x_

**I apologise for the roller – coaster of inconsistency that this story seems to be becoming. I appreciate that I'm probably the only person that still likes it a bit. Ah well. **

**I should probably add that Loki's thoughts on one – night romance and the **_**Terminator **_**movies are entirely my own! :-)**


	8. Chapter 8

**8.**

_Hot. Terrible burning heat, trapped in a small hurtling box that he cannot escape, trapped in close quarters with a riddle he cannot answer, a riddle with teeth to eat him alive and the desperate knowledge that he has to answer it if he ever wants to get out of this. _

_Hot. Pastel pink and baby blue all around and no way out. Hot with crazy angles and the floor falling away into plummeting dark and _things _in the dark that he simply does not want to think about. Plastering himself to the wall, trying to cling to that shiny surface to get away from that floor he can feel but not see beneath his feet – a floor that appears to not be there. _

_Sweating and pleading and eventually crying that the answer is a door! It has always been a door – and the train tracks screech and he is jolted and thrown, falling and falling in the dark and the things that live there calling him by name –_

"Loki!" He feels the bed beneath his shoulders with a painful shock as though he has hit it from a great height, feels sick and finds Thor's anxious face, a light to see by in the darkness; finally wanting to be sick from the fall and then from the relief.

"It was just a dream Loki," Thor strokes the messy hair back from Loki's forehead, the familiarity of the words – for so they have become – not lessening their reassuring effect – "Just another dream". Loki presses his face into Thor's chest, surprised to find that his face is moist now from streaming eyes –

"I'm sorry Thor –" he gulps – "I'm sorry – I don't know what's happening to me –"

"Shh –" Thor strokes away Loki's shaking with those firm, constantly patient hands – "Shh Loki, it's okay, it's okay little brother."

Finally Loki falls back to sleep, landing almost instantly and with a sickening thump onto not quite soft sand.

It is so frighteningly real he can feel the grain, even pick the minuscule pieces of shell from his hands. Standing he immediately starts to shake for he knows beyond doubt that there is something horrendous just behind him; he can feel its dark breath at his shoulder, hear it like a panting beneath the ears. He stands still for the age of a tree and then the dream lurches him into a run, clumsy and swamped by the soft sand. It is a hopeless run for the thing behind him never loses ground, never stops its breathing down his neck, its nipping at his heels; the evil oily thing that lurks in his shadow; that maybe _is_ his shadow. He runs as though it feels like his heart will burst, until the dreadful moment comes when he stops, knowing that he is about to look behind him. Nothing, not even the thing itself, can compare to the terror of being about to look over the shoulder at the thing behind you.

Wake up, he thinks to himself frantically, please wake up now – but he cannot, he does not even when he sees the monstrous lobster claws clacking close to his ear and hears the crawling things chuckle out their clattering song. He does not want to think how easily those claws could snap the flesh but he cannot think of anything else – of course. His fingers and toes tingle upsettingly in awareness.

He backs away again fast and now, further up the beach, stands a door, disjointed on its own, red and pulsing with a faint pink light. He knows that if he could just make it to that door he could still be well. As he gets closer he can hear a voice calling him from the other side of the door and the voice is Thor's, coming clearer and clearer until he can make out his own name in the sound just before he wakes up – once again in his bed, but this time with an overwhelming sense of relief. It is so strong that he smiles from it and Thor, seeing him, smiles back –

"Hey gorgeous". Loki does not feel remotely gorgeous in the wake of these dreams but he appreciates the sentiment all the same – "Hey, remember what today is?"

Loki blinks for a few moments, never as quick to properly wake himself up as Thor is, but finally he grins widely and lets Thor say it with him –

"Opening night!"

The nightmares fall away easily and Loki kisses Thor on the nose and sits up, excited as a child at Christmas. Loki has been almost ceaselessly excited about opening night ever since last week's dress rehearsal and it pleases Thor beyond measure to see it and to feel the happiness buzzing off him. It is a daily emotional rollercoaster between this and the nightmares, Thor waking now nearly every night in the grip of Loki's terror. At the time it always seems to consume him, yet then by day Loki seems to barely think of it. Thor struggles to keep up, worried that Loki is not really as cheerful as he is when he seems to be. But then he cannot help but feel so happy at Loki's happiness, it seems like it can only be for real.

For himself, Loki tries to not stop moving. When he is still he sings songs in his head to keep the strange thoughts and confusing feelings that seem a lot like terror from creeping in. It is confusing, but the busyness and the music keep even most of the confusion at bay, besides which in the run – up to opening night it would have been difficult to stay quiet and still even if he had really wanted to.

After weeks of rehearsal and against all expectation the second dress rehearsal had been such a resounding success that even director Fury had been happy enough with them all to nod a silent approval and offer everyone no more than one comment each in criticism. Plus there had been the occasion when Loki and Stark had almost simultaneously burst into an impromptu recital of songs from _Miss Saigon _that had made the entire rest of the cast stop and applaud, after which everyone had noticed a marked improvement between their starring divas to which neither would have readily admitted, and Thor curiously finds himself much happier with Loki's new found ambivalence towards the man than he had been with his petulant dislike.

"Loki!" he calls now, half laughing as a dramatic and rather heart felt rendition of _Let it Go _belts its way out of the bathroom – "Loki, save your voice!"

"The cold never bothered me anyway!" Loki trills back before taking the advice.

It is, Thor thinks, like looking after a hyperactive child, as Loki hovers around the kitchen later, too wired to sit down.

"Loki please –" he groans – "Please sit down and eat breakfast - no –" he sighs a Loki's interpretation of this – "drinking juice while pacing is _not _breakfast!"

"Juice while sitting?" Loki sits down, forcing himself, though he wriggles in his chair like a fractious puppy.

"Loki, please eat some actual food."

"Nuh," Loki pouts – "Don't wanna."

"Loki, you're my little brother and I am going to look after you whether you like it or not. I know you're nervous but –"

"Pfft –" Loki snorts – "I'm not nervous? Why would I be nervous? That's just –" Thor rolls his eyes at him and he sighs – "_Fine -" _he drawls – "I'll have a smoothie."

Thor sighs, but he feels he has to respect the fact that Loki has made an actual compromise for once and rolls his eyes –

"Fine," he returns. "But I'm gonna put so many calories in this one smoothie that it would make even _me _cry."

Loki relents and, after entirely failing to be persuaded to anything else, kisses Thor hard and heads off to the theatre. Thor finds himself eating breakfast enough for the both of them, even though he has been infected enough with Loki's nervous excitement to trouble his own stomach – still there is little emotion he can experience that he does not find to be aided by food in quantity. He tries all afternoon to stop worrying, knowing that Loki will probably not eat now until after the show tonight – over twelve hours from now, alternately fretting and scolding himself for it, telling himself that Loki can look after himself and suspecting that it is not really true.

He finds himself relieved when six o' clock comes round and he has something to do in the form of making himself more presentable than he suspects he has ever had to be before and getting a cab to Stark tower to pick up Pepper – in the absence of having anyone else to go with he has finally let himself be talked into the Stark private box.

Stark Tower. Loki has bitched at him about this place, its very existence being the main bone of contention - so many times now that he had actually become curious. Standing outside it now, it is hard but unavoidable to realise that the complaints are all valid – Tony Stark really does own a big fucking tower with his name on it. He fights hard but successfully to keep his mouth from dropping open at the ostentatious, rather obnoxious impressiveness of the place and is glad that Pepper is waiting just outside so that he does not have to feel like the lumbering oaf he supposes he inevitably would if he so much as set foot in the place. But Pepper takes his offered arm with a smile that puts him much more at ease and even feeling positively chivalrous in the act of escorting a lady – although once they reach the theatre he feels more as though she is the one escorting him and when she whispers – "He'll be fine!" he wonders how she noticed he was still tense or guessed that it was mostly for Loki – "Better than fine," she adds, patting him on the arm as they move into their seats.

The performance is perfect, though Thor finds it hard to hide that he only has eyes for Loki. Well, he only ever has had. Loki on stage is almost frighteningly compelling. He dazzles and bewitches and when he feigns his magic tricks you could swear there was real magic in dancing colours sparking from his fingertips. It makes Thor's heart swell beneath the knowledge that this one is _his, _the heart singing aloud to the tune of _mine. _He feels privileged to know that person on the stage, enough to see how in his element he is here, how glowingly alive. And hand in hand with his feeling of near princely arrogance at this privilege comes the tantalizing frustration that from here he is no more able to touch that loveliness than anyone else in this audience.

The tingles of arrogance and of want only get worse until, by the end, he is ready to dash into the back and drag his Loki home like some barbarian. For a moment he cannot help the irritation from flaring broadly in his eyes when Pepper reminds him that they have an after show party in honour of opening night to get through yet.

"Oh – what you're feeling – I'm right there with you." she nods. Thor gulps, hoping she cannot read the tangled and rather graphic mess of his thoughts –

"No – I – I don't think you are," he swallow hard.

"Oh no," she grins at him for a second – "I really am."

They wait at the stage door, smiling politely but internally screaming at the hordes of screaming fans that block the paths to the respective beloveds. Tony's fans come in a quantity that is predictably immense, but Thor is surprised to see that Loki already has quite a fervid following himself; mostly of rather young girls who seem to be in rather a terrible state of affliction. He is both amused and jealously incensed, but the look on Loki's face quickly softens him into simple gentle amusement. Loki's face is a fantastic mess of bewilderment, delight, exhaustion and hyperactivity and he smiles benignly upon his fans like a benevolent god. Thor smiles to himself and wishes he could step in and be Loki's bodyguard all at once.

When the fans finally disperse Thor manages to lunge forward and take Loki exuberantly into his arms whilst all around them the cast and their loved ones do likewise.

"Did you see them?" Loki breathes excitedly, beaming up at Thor with sparkling eyes – "Those girls were _insane! _I could have asked them all to kneel for me and they would!"

"Well, do not test that," Thor says as seriously as he can in the face of Loki's beautiful flushed laughter.

"Would I?" Loki grins. Thor shakes his head in despair – of course he would – "Come on –" Loki adds, taking his hand like a child as they all start to move out across the street to the hall that has been booked for the after show celebrations –

"I won't make you stay long –" Loki breezes, his voice far louder than it should be as they enter the room thronged with people – "Not just for your sake but I can't tell you how much I wanna be fucking right now." Thor sighs deeply at what is becoming Loki's rapidly more frequent habit of saying these things out loud – _actors, _he groans, not for the first or the last time in his head.

"Oh my god – food!" Loki groans in delight, heading for the buffet table the instant they set foot in the room, leaving Thor standing awkwardly next to Director Fury. He quietly presses into his hand a glass of champagne that seems ridiculously small. Fury is everything Thor would not have expected from a Theatre director, serious and sober and surprisingly courteous given what he has seen of the theatrical world. It is several minutes before Thor moves away to find out what has become of Loki. He finds him still by the buffet table half talking to Tony and Pepper through a face of food.

"Well Loki –" Thor smiles – "I see you've eaten – the buffet."

"It is extraordinary how quickly all the food has disappeared isn't it?" Tony agrees. "Wherever does he put it?"

"I wash hungee!" Loki objects through a mouth that is still ill – manneredly full.

"Actors," Pepper expectorates on Thor's behalf.

"I remember my first opening night," Tony shrugs – "Ate the whole buffet and then got pizza afterwards. It's easily done."

"I'm going to die!" Loki announces heavily, smiling, head spinning with excitement and sudden intake of food – "Shall we go now?" he turns to Thor, his smile beatific, his eyes wicked.

"Already? Would that not be rude?"

"Oh go, the pair of you" Tony groans – "Before you do something to make me throw up my canapés. Go. Shoo."

They leave hand in hand, the cries of _have a good one _ringing in Thor's ears while all Loki hears is still the thunderous appreciation of his multitude of fans.

There is only one thing, he reflects, that can make the night better than this.

_x_

**And that's gonna happen in the next chapter!**

**I'm so sorry it's been ages coming, I have had so much work today this is my first day off in forever! I should start getting more of everything written again soon! :-)**


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